A Study On The Atypical Arguments From The Perspective Of Generative Constructionism

This thesis concentrates on the phenomena of atypical arguments in Chinese sentences.Atypical arguments refer to the non-core components in the subject and object positions,which are out of the lexical information of the verb in the lexicon,but closely related to the event expressed by the verb.In Chinese there are many sentences that do not conform to the typical argument structure of the verbs,but these sentences are still acceptable.It seems that there is no very strict requirement on the argument structure of Chinese verbs,and thus the phenomenon of sentences with atypical arguments is widespread and universal in Chinese.Many relevant studies have been conducted,in which Chinese scholars have attempted to explore various types of sentences with atypical arguments and explain the generative mechanism of argument structures of the verbs based on different approaches within the framework of Generative Grammar.For example,the virtual preposition proposal,the applicative hypothesis,and the light verb theory have been proposed within this framework.The primary goal of this thesis is to provide a comprehensive and reasonable investigation into the phenomena of atypical arguments in Chinese from the perspective of Generative Constructionism.This research makes a thorough research on the complex realization of atypical arguments in Chinese sentences,and analyze the realization of atypical arguments in different types of sentences in terms of the position of the atypical arguments.Furthermore,various types of verbs able to appear in the sentences with atypical arguments will be examined,and the semantic features shared by these verbs will be explored.Lastly,the theoretical framework of Generative Constructionism is adopted to explore the generative mechanism of atypical arguments in the Chinese sentences.Firstly,there are different types of sentences with atypical arguments in terms of the position of atypical arguments.Atypical arguments appear in either subject or object position in Chinese sentences.There is a type of sentences with an atypical argument in the subject position,a type with an atypical argument in the object position,and a type with an atypical argument in the subject position and an atypical argument in the object position at the same time.Some of these sentences are formed by replacing the original argument with an atypical one or by inserting a new component in the subject or object position,and some are formed by the inversion of atypical arguments in the two positions.Then,verbs of the sentences with atypical arguments are analyzed in terms of the semantic features of displacement,causativity,boundness,and dynamic phase.As for intransitive verbs,those with the displacement feature,the causativity feature,the boundness feature,and the dynamic phase feature can take atypical arguments in the sentences.As for transitive verbs,those with the causativity feature and the dynamic phase feature can take atypical arguments in the sentences.Finally,a moderate view of Generative Constructionism is employed to analyze the generative mechanism of atypical arguments in the Chinese sentences.In this thesis,verbal roots are just bundles of encyclopedic information about the real world without syntactically-relevant information.Thus,a verbal root does not have categorial features,which obtains the lexical category by taking the complement position of the functional category that can endow it with the verbal category.Atypical arguments are introduced into the sentences by light verbs,and take the specifier position of the light verbs.Besides,light verbs functioning in the generation of atypical arguments are determined by the event expressed by a predicate which is relevant to its idiosyncratic meaning.In summary,the generative mechanism of atypical arguments in Chinese sentences is such a complex phenomenon that it is difficult to investigate thoroughly and exhaustively all the types of sentences that involve atypical arguments.This thesis indeed put into consideration some instances rarely involved in previous studies.However,it is significant for further research to explore more and more recent similar linguistic phenomena.